It turns out it's not as straightforward is one would hope:

1. If you have miles as a preference in your Choice profile, and you book through the website (using your Choice #), all is well.

2. If you book on the phone or in person, they will default to points unless you specifically request miles at checkin, and you give them your FF number and so on. You also have to make sure they do it, because a lot of the front desk folks don't know how, so they might have to call a manager.

I don't think this is true. I've had problems with three properties here in San Diego (all owned by same group) defaulting my point preference to my choice rewards account, regardless of what was used online (my Mileage Plus #).

OK - probably true.

I make most of my reservations either on the phone or directly, and I usually go for points, so all I could do was repeat what they told me.

The lesson to be learned is: If you're going for miles, better make sure at checkin that it's in your folio, or you might not get them.

Even calling a manager doesn't always work. I've had to write in for credit the last 3 times. Frankly, Choice hotels are becoming a less attractive mileage-earning opportunity for me.

What did it say in your reservation?

What counts (assuming you don't override at check-in) is the earning prefernce at the time you make the intiial reservation online, not the earning preference at any other time.

Then when you make the reservation, and also if you print out the reservation confirmation later, it should say somewhere on there "your Mileage Plus #blabla was used in this reservation".

In fact, once it's in the reservation there is no way (that I've found) to change it online, without cancelling and rebooking the reservation.

I don't see how the hotel could have changed it if you didn't show them your Choice card. That's because if your preference on the reservation is miles, there's no record of your Choice account number in the reservation! I've run into this (and documented it in a separate thread) where it came up that a property wasn't giving me (an Elite Diamond this year) my USA Today every morning because "we only give it to Choice Priveleges members" ("I am one"), "oh, we only have enough for Diamond" ("I am one"), "no, it says here you're AA" ("what?"), "it says you're AA" (and then reads off my AAdvantage number)!

However, in the past when I've had stays that I wanted to be miles post as points, I have been able to contact Choice customer service by email and get it corrected (including the 3x bonus), tho sometimes it took a while and some followup. (If instead something posts as miles and you wanted points, that's too late, because the miles have left the building by the time you can verify that's what happened.) I haven't had to do this for a couple years now so don't have any recent experience with this...

How long do you wait for miles to post until you decide to write in for missing miles?

In my case, it's taking about 2 weeks. I think the official word is 4-6 weeks.

"Your United Mileage Plus� Account XXXX was used in this reservation."

My belief is that those three specific hotels I'm staying at in San Diego are using a different reservation system than some others in the chain. I also am in the belief that regardless of my affinity program, Choice is communicating my Choice Privileges # to the hotel, which is getting picked up by their reservation system rather than my airline miles.

Alternatively, I've been staying in lots of other choice hotels -- and only those three are having the problem with posting to my Choice account rather than my airline mile account (And all 3 are owned by the same company) -- I think its safe to say that you should ask at checkin/check out just to make sure your proper affinity affiliation is in the reservation.

I just talked to them on the phone this afternoon, and first, I can confirm that on their computer they can see miles at the Choice end, even though you can't see them online at the Choice end ever, and only can see them if/when they get to the airline.

Anyhow, I had a weird problem where I noticed that my stays since early March had been posting 250 but not 500. I called them up, and several of the people at the other end looked into it for a number of minutes (putting me on hold) and couldn't figure out why it had happened, especially since it had "fixed itself" (ie, they could already see that a stay from last week that hadn't yet gotten to the airline had already been sent as 250+500, even though my stays from mid-March hadn't. They couldn't figure out what had happened or how to fix it otherwise, so they just issued me 2000 bulk miles.

Luckily these stays were credited to AA, not NW, so they won't affect the (mis)counting of Perkology bonuses!